It remains to be seen who is responsible for the arson attacks on a van and threats to Munich’s famous Oktoberfest on October 1st. Police are currently treating a claim of responsibility posted on the left-wing extremist platform Indymedia as either a fake or plagiarism.
But regardless of the investigation’s outcome, Germany faces a massive problem with ideologically motivated left-wing extremist violence—one that politicians and media have been reluctant to confront.
Three weeks ago, around 50,000 households, businesses, schools, and care homes lost electricity for up to 60 hours following a left-extremist attack. It was Berlin’s worst and longest blackout since WWII, caused by arson on two high-voltage pylons. An obscure anarchist group claimed responsibility on Indymedia, and police are treating the claim as credible.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. Consider the timeline:
- March 2024: High-voltage pylons near Tesla’s Gigafactory in Brandenburg were burned down, halting production for days. This followed earlier attacks in 2021 targeting six high-voltage cables at the construction site.
- February 2025: Construction company STRABAG had cranes and equipment destroyed.
- June 2025: Extremists set fire to Amazon and Telecom delivery vans in Berlin. Their Indymedia statement boasted, “Fences and cameras could not stop the anti-militarists from attacking these two military collaborators”—written in the gender-inclusive language popular in left-liberal circles.
- August 2025: Repeated attacks on railway lines, including the Duisburg-Düsseldorf line. Left-wing extremists denounced Deutsche Bahn as the largest logistics company in the “capitalist profit economy.” According to Spiegel, police recorded 524 crimes of a suspected political nature targeting rail infrastructure nationwide in 2024.
- September 2025: A group calling itself “Palestine Action in Germany” broke into Elbit Systems (an Israeli defence contractor) in Ulm, smashed equipment, and spray-painted graffiti denouncing Israel’s “genocide.”
These incidents have caused billions of euros in damage and endangered human lives. During the September blackout in Berlin, commuters were stranded in trains and trams. Care patients needing oxygen had to be evacuated. Schools shut down. Emergency lines went dead.
Mainstream complicity
What makes this crisis particularly troubling is how the language of extremist manifestos echoes mainstream progressive discourse. The September attackers railed against the “fake promises of progress made by technology and capital” behind which lurked a “fascist grimace.” They called Israel a genocidal warmonger state and justified harm to innocent people as necessary collateral damage against the West’s “militaristic-industrial complex.”
Strip away the explicitly violent rhetoric, and these talking points are indistinguishable from debates in German universities, media outlets, and even parliament.
Berlin’s mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) rightly condemned the September attack as directed at the people of Berlin, noting it “deliberately endangered human lives and the safety of our city.” Yet for years, politicians largely ignored the growing threat of left-wing extremism, focusing almost exclusively on far-right threats.
The state’s response has been remarkably restrained—especially compared to its approach to other threats. There has been no “police day of action” against left-wing extremism, unlike the numerous operations against “hate speech.” No hyped-up special TV reports, as would certainly have occurred had a right-wing group claimed responsibility for the blackout.
Less than four weeks after the September incident, it has largely disappeared from public discourse, partly because no arrests have been made. This has raised suspicions that authorities aren’t pursuing these cases with sufficient urgency. Even in the Tesla cases from years ago, no one has been arrested or named.
Germany’s main broadcaster ARD has offered speculation: “Almost every day, the railway reports cases of sabotage: lines are closed as a result, trains run late—or not at all. Is Russia behind this? Or is it left-wing extremists?” Only further down does the report admit it is most likely “far-left extremism.”
Russia’s meddling or not. The more pressing question surely is: who are the sympathisers and supporters at home?
Ideological cover from respectable quarters
The first suspects are obvious: Germany’s pro-antifa lobby. Katina Schubert, secretary general of the Left Party (Die Linke) in Brandenburg, said during last year’s election campaign that Elon Musk is a “typical right-winger who runs his company like a dictator and needs to have his plug pulled out”—knowing full well that left-wing radicals had literally pulled Tesla’s plug. Berlin’s Senator for Labour, Cansel Kiziltepe (SPD), wishing to keep up with her left opponent, called Tesla cars “Nazi cars” on X this year, despite knowing that 500 cars (mostly Teslas) were burned in Germany’s streets last year alone.
Then there are mainstream journalists who openly share the extremists’ goals, even if they disagree with their methods. After the Amazon attacks, Berlin’s respectable middle-class Tagesspiegel published a commentary complaining that the left “had learned nothing” because the action would only “boost sales for globally operating car companies, which were likely also entangled in military infrastructure.” The writer suggested boycotting Amazon instead—a kinder, gentler version of the same anti-capitalist agenda.
Even more revealing were progressive sympathies for the Elbit attack in Ulm, which ironically occurred during a “peace week.” One commentator objected to media descriptions using terms like “assault” and “attack,” arguing it was merely a break-in involving graffiti and property damage—a justified protest against an immoral company. The semantic gymnastics spoke volumes: violence becomes acceptable when directed at anything to do with Israel.
These extremist saboteurs who are carrying out the attacks are likely impressionable young people shaped by years of mainstream anti-capitalist messaging. They’ve been told the planet “is burning,” that the climate tipping point has been reached, and that it’s almost too late to avert catastrophe. They’ve learned that Black Lives Matter was a wonderful movement and that “we are all racists” cannot be repeated often enough. They see it as self-evident that combating modern evils requires sacrifices and forcing people to change their ways. If they’ve gone nuts, then it’s because the mainstream world around them has too.
The throughline connecting these attacks is a deep rejection not just of progress, technology, and growth, but of everything representing Western civilisation—including a pronounced anti-Americanism and hatred of Israel (viewed as the epitome of the West’s supposed sins).
Why the state struggles to respond
If the mainstream media and politicians find it difficult to criticise left-wing extremists with the necessary urgency, it’s because they see their own ideas reflected in them—from the pursuit of net zero and its contempt for the aspirations of ordinary people to decolonisation theories and identity politics.
Of course, this isn’t meant to suggest that there is a moral equivalence between those who endanger public life through sabotage and our eco-conscious, self-loathing elites. Responsibility for crimes lies always with those who commit them. Yet, if we fail to challenge the anti-humanist ideology underlying modern thinking, we cannot be surprised when sections of the next generation are lost to narcissism, elitism and, ultimately, undemocratic nihilism.
For the elites, left-wing extremism poses an embarrassment because it exposes their own ideology by acting as its military wing. For the rest of us, it highlights how urgent it is to confront and overcome the anti-humanist and anti-Western ideologies that have dominated German debates for far too long.
The attacks will continue until Germany is willing to have an honest conversation about the ideological swamp that produces them. Given the elites’ reluctance to examine their own complicity, this reckoning will likely come not from above, but from below—driven by popular pressure and social media discourse that pro-establishment gatekeepers are so keen to control.
When Mainstream Ideology Fuels Radical Left-Wing Violence
Participants of the “Revolutionary 1st of May Demonstration” light flares and wave flags of the left-wing Antifa movement during May Day events on May 1, 2018 in Berlin.
John MacDougall / AFP
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It remains to be seen who is responsible for the arson attacks on a van and threats to Munich’s famous Oktoberfest on October 1st. Police are currently treating a claim of responsibility posted on the left-wing extremist platform Indymedia as either a fake or plagiarism.
But regardless of the investigation’s outcome, Germany faces a massive problem with ideologically motivated left-wing extremist violence—one that politicians and media have been reluctant to confront.
Three weeks ago, around 50,000 households, businesses, schools, and care homes lost electricity for up to 60 hours following a left-extremist attack. It was Berlin’s worst and longest blackout since WWII, caused by arson on two high-voltage pylons. An obscure anarchist group claimed responsibility on Indymedia, and police are treating the claim as credible.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. Consider the timeline:
These incidents have caused billions of euros in damage and endangered human lives. During the September blackout in Berlin, commuters were stranded in trains and trams. Care patients needing oxygen had to be evacuated. Schools shut down. Emergency lines went dead.
Mainstream complicity
What makes this crisis particularly troubling is how the language of extremist manifestos echoes mainstream progressive discourse. The September attackers railed against the “fake promises of progress made by technology and capital” behind which lurked a “fascist grimace.” They called Israel a genocidal warmonger state and justified harm to innocent people as necessary collateral damage against the West’s “militaristic-industrial complex.”
Strip away the explicitly violent rhetoric, and these talking points are indistinguishable from debates in German universities, media outlets, and even parliament.
Berlin’s mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) rightly condemned the September attack as directed at the people of Berlin, noting it “deliberately endangered human lives and the safety of our city.” Yet for years, politicians largely ignored the growing threat of left-wing extremism, focusing almost exclusively on far-right threats.
The state’s response has been remarkably restrained—especially compared to its approach to other threats. There has been no “police day of action” against left-wing extremism, unlike the numerous operations against “hate speech.” No hyped-up special TV reports, as would certainly have occurred had a right-wing group claimed responsibility for the blackout.
Less than four weeks after the September incident, it has largely disappeared from public discourse, partly because no arrests have been made. This has raised suspicions that authorities aren’t pursuing these cases with sufficient urgency. Even in the Tesla cases from years ago, no one has been arrested or named.
Germany’s main broadcaster ARD has offered speculation: “Almost every day, the railway reports cases of sabotage: lines are closed as a result, trains run late—or not at all. Is Russia behind this? Or is it left-wing extremists?” Only further down does the report admit it is most likely “far-left extremism.”
Russia’s meddling or not. The more pressing question surely is: who are the sympathisers and supporters at home?
Ideological cover from respectable quarters
The first suspects are obvious: Germany’s pro-antifa lobby. Katina Schubert, secretary general of the Left Party (Die Linke) in Brandenburg, said during last year’s election campaign that Elon Musk is a “typical right-winger who runs his company like a dictator and needs to have his plug pulled out”—knowing full well that left-wing radicals had literally pulled Tesla’s plug. Berlin’s Senator for Labour, Cansel Kiziltepe (SPD), wishing to keep up with her left opponent, called Tesla cars “Nazi cars” on X this year, despite knowing that 500 cars (mostly Teslas) were burned in Germany’s streets last year alone.
Then there are mainstream journalists who openly share the extremists’ goals, even if they disagree with their methods. After the Amazon attacks, Berlin’s respectable middle-class Tagesspiegel published a commentary complaining that the left “had learned nothing” because the action would only “boost sales for globally operating car companies, which were likely also entangled in military infrastructure.” The writer suggested boycotting Amazon instead—a kinder, gentler version of the same anti-capitalist agenda.
Even more revealing were progressive sympathies for the Elbit attack in Ulm, which ironically occurred during a “peace week.” One commentator objected to media descriptions using terms like “assault” and “attack,” arguing it was merely a break-in involving graffiti and property damage—a justified protest against an immoral company. The semantic gymnastics spoke volumes: violence becomes acceptable when directed at anything to do with Israel.
These extremist saboteurs who are carrying out the attacks are likely impressionable young people shaped by years of mainstream anti-capitalist messaging. They’ve been told the planet “is burning,” that the climate tipping point has been reached, and that it’s almost too late to avert catastrophe. They’ve learned that Black Lives Matter was a wonderful movement and that “we are all racists” cannot be repeated often enough. They see it as self-evident that combating modern evils requires sacrifices and forcing people to change their ways. If they’ve gone nuts, then it’s because the mainstream world around them has too.
The throughline connecting these attacks is a deep rejection not just of progress, technology, and growth, but of everything representing Western civilisation—including a pronounced anti-Americanism and hatred of Israel (viewed as the epitome of the West’s supposed sins).
Why the state struggles to respond
If the mainstream media and politicians find it difficult to criticise left-wing extremists with the necessary urgency, it’s because they see their own ideas reflected in them—from the pursuit of net zero and its contempt for the aspirations of ordinary people to decolonisation theories and identity politics.
Of course, this isn’t meant to suggest that there is a moral equivalence between those who endanger public life through sabotage and our eco-conscious, self-loathing elites. Responsibility for crimes lies always with those who commit them. Yet, if we fail to challenge the anti-humanist ideology underlying modern thinking, we cannot be surprised when sections of the next generation are lost to narcissism, elitism and, ultimately, undemocratic nihilism.
For the elites, left-wing extremism poses an embarrassment because it exposes their own ideology by acting as its military wing. For the rest of us, it highlights how urgent it is to confront and overcome the anti-humanist and anti-Western ideologies that have dominated German debates for far too long.
The attacks will continue until Germany is willing to have an honest conversation about the ideological swamp that produces them. Given the elites’ reluctance to examine their own complicity, this reckoning will likely come not from above, but from below—driven by popular pressure and social media discourse that pro-establishment gatekeepers are so keen to control.
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